April 6th, 2011 |
5:05 PM

For the month of March I gave myself permission to not write and to try and learn how to play (mostly with art.) My hope was that I could find a way to reconnect with my lost writer self. Now that the month of play is over I am trying to distill what I have learned on my journey in my poem-a-day project for National Poetry Month.

I know many people say, and they are right to do so, that the joy is in the process of writing, not in the sale. But truth be told, once you've made a sale or two or three, it's hard to focus on process instead of product. At least for me.

Before I'd ever heard of query letters or a synopsisor even dared imagine the possibility of signing with a New York agent,I used to sit on the stoop of cement in my garage and write exactly the kind of storiesI liked to read.

I didn't have a market guideor a critique group and SCBWI was just a bunch of mixed up letters from the alphabet.

Before I ever sold a single book I didn't wonder how many copies it would sellor when I would earn back my advanceor whether the reviewers would be kindif they decided to review it at all.

The Internet was still a dreamto be unfurledso there were no worries about blogs or websites or social media status updates.

I wrote because it made me happyto imagine the child I used to bein the stories I told myself.I wrote because figuring out what happened nextwas more fun than a crossword puzzle or learning how to knit.and I wrote because when I didn't write, I was (according to my kids) grumpy until I once again picked up a pad and pen.

I don't want to go back in timeor undo what I've done over the yearsbut I want to find a way to remember what it felt liketo sit on that cement stoop scribbling on that green steno padplotting stories for no one but myself.

Thank you, Jeannine. Form? I have form? I so confused and frustrated and blocked in ways when it comes to thinking about form. No matter how much I read and try to study, doing this on my own just doesn't seem to click. But thank you.

I cannot express how much your poem, and your post, meant to me today. I'm beginning a new revision of a middle-grade novel, one that will require a third of the story to be changed, and I've been reminded today, over and over, that I need to remember the heart of why I wanted to write this story, and how I wanted it to "feel" when it's done. And I want it to feel like some of the best stories I read when I was growing up--the Anastasias and the Margarets and so many more. Your poem helped take me back to that place when stories first became sacred. Thank you for that.

Who am I?I was born on the Cancer/Leo cusp and share a birthday with Ernest Hemingway and Robin Williams. The similarities don't stop there as I can go from depressed to ecstatic without ever passing go. I feel scared most of the time though my friends call me brave and I find it easier to believe in my friends than to believe in my own abilities to make what I want out of my life.

Who am I? A wife, a mother, a daughter, and even, gulp, a grandmother.

Who am I? A writer who never gets tired of playing with words, even when the words are hard to find. A writer of books for children and articles for grown-ups and many things in-between.

"Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties."
--Bonnie Friedman

"As writers, we must be willing to feel our sadness, our anger, our terror, so we can reach in and find our sweet vulnerability that is just sitting there waiting for us to come back home."
--Nancy Slonim Aronie

"Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is."
--Anne Rice